ISS/was Re: SPACE: Loss of the Saturn V

From: Technotranscendence (neptune@superlink.net)
Date: Sun Sep 07 2003 - 06:33:31 MDT

  • Next message: Technotranscendence: "Re: SPACE: Loss of the Saturn V"

    On Friday, September 05, 2003 11:50 PM Spike spike66@comcast.net wrote:
    >
    http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/05/1731237&mode=threade
    > tid=134&tid=160&tid=98&tid=99
    >
    > "When NASA killed Saturn, they killed
    > more than the vehicle...Two of these
    > launches could have put the entire ISS
    > as it currently is configured in orbit!"
    >
    >
    > Welllll, that might be a bit of overstatement.
    > There is more to the ISS than lifting mass.
    > They have a tremendous build-on-orbit task
    > that requires astronauts and time. I suppose
    > they might have been able to park the pieces
    > on orbit somehow, then send up astronauts
    > by some means.

    You could also have more and bigger components for the same price. I
    still believe Saturns would've beat STSs in this department.

    Also, a lot of the build-on-orbit part of it comes because of the
    smaller sizes of the components.

    It would've been a lot better to keep both Skylab (downed sometime in
    the late 1970s, I believe) and Mir. For a fraction of the ISS budget, I
    bet, Mir could've been refurbished.

    This doesn't even bring up ideas like using STS External Tanks to make
    space stations...

    Warmest wishes form,

    Dan
    http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/MyWorksBySubject.html

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